Ice closed more than 20 highways statewide - including every interstate through Baton Rouge, where yards were frosted and streets mostly empty. State police logged dozens of weather-related crashes overnight, but said there were fewer than during the storm last week.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - An arctic front kept Louisiana iced in Wednesday, with daybreak temperatures at or below freezing.
Ice closed more than 20 highways statewide - including every interstate through Baton Rouge, where yards were frosted and streets mostly empty. State police logged dozens of weather-related crashes overnight, but said there were fewer than during the storm last week.
The cold chilled commerce in uptown New Orleans. Streets usually awash with school and workday traffic were largely quiet Wednesday morning.
"We're usually a lot busier than this," Sara Mohrman said from behind the counter at a popular French bakery and breakfast spot that had seen only five customers by 8 a.m.
An Ohio native, she said she was taken aback at how the cold could paralyze a Southern city. "My family is laughing at us," she said.
The bike and jogging path around Audubon Park was virtually deserted but 82-year-old Ann Babington didn't let the frigid weather cancel her daily 2½-mile walk. She was an hour later than usual - she decided to attend a later Mass at her church before bundling up.
"There's no hurry because everything is closed," she said.
Darren Clement opened his Magazine Street hardware store at 8 a.m. Wednesday and was still waiting for his first customer of the day about an hour later. Business at Clement Hardware was brisk Monday and Tuesday, however, as residents prepared for the worst. The store sold out of space heaters and pipe insulation and was running low on flashlights, gas cans, kerosene and other items that typically fly off the shelves during the sweltering months of hurricane season.
"This is kind of our winter hurricane," he said with a laugh.
Overall, there were relatively few wrecks and power failures. Power companies said fewer than 600 customers were without electricity at 8:30 a.m., down from 2,200 about 90 minutes earlier.
At least 48 school systems remained closed Wednesday, down from 55 Tuesday.
With schools, state offices and businesses closed across Louisiana, state police said people generally seemed to follow advice to stay off the road.
Roads were worse but traffic much sparser and wrecks far fewer than last Friday, when two people died on icy roads, Sgt. Nicholas Manale said Tuesday.
Troopers logged 35 weather-related crashes overnight in central Louisiana, 19 in the Baton Rouge area and 15 in parishes above Lake Pontchartrain. In southwest Louisiana, weather had contributed to 10 wrecks since early Tuesday, compared to 71 last week, Trooper James Anderson said Wednesday.
"People seemed to heed the warning to stay off the road this time, which certainly helped," he wrote in an email.
Power companies were thankful that snow and sleet fell across most of the state, rather than freezing rain.
"Sleet comes down as ice, so when it hits it bounces off," said Cleco spokeswoman Robbyn Cooper. Freezing rain, on the other hand, weights transmission lines and branches with ice. "That's what typically will bring down the limbs and cause problems with power lines," she said.
Tuesday's largest outage was brief. High winds blew two transmission lines into each other, knocking out power to about 8,000 customers in New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish, said Entergy Corp. spokeswoman Charlotte Cavell. She said a crew fixed it within five minutes.
The central Louisiana town of Jena got 4 inches of snow and sleet. Flights in and out of New Orleans and other cities were canceled. French Quarter streets were oddly quiet, with brass bands and other street performers staying home.
Ice on streets and walks leading to ferry landings and on the boats themselves shut down service from Chalmette to Algiers and Algiers to New Orleans' east bank.
The nasty weather shut down state offices in 56 of Louisiana's 64 parishes Tuesday; 49 of them remained closed Wednesday, said Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols.
Associated Press correspondent Melinda Deslatte contributed to this report from Baton Rouge, La., and writer Janet McConnaughey from New Orleans.